European Spring: Demand debt justice for Greece

The Greek people are demanding debt justice from the eurozone establishment and they urgently need our support. Greeks have suffered the worst economic depression of any country in modern times and cannot afford to pay back the ?320 billion – ?29,100 (£21,800) for every man, woman and child – that their government owes. They have just elected a new government that is demanding that the debt be halved, but the eurozone establishment is refusing to budge. A showdown is looming and if we make our voices heard, it could make all the difference.
Nobody is denying that previous Greek governments borrowed recklessly – but that is not a good reason to keep Greeks locked up in a modern-day debtors’ prison. They have already suffered immense hardship because of the brutal austerity imposed by the EU. People’s incomes have collapsed by nearly a third over the past six years and many workers go unpaid. One in four Greeks – and one in two young people – are unemployed. The social safety net has been shredded. Many families scrape by on seniors’ slashed pensions. Crowds jostle for handouts at food banks. Some children are reduced to scavenging through rubbish bins for scraps. Hospitals run short of medicines. Malaria has even made a return.
Greece’s debts should have been cut in 2010, when it became clear they were unpayable. That would have avoided a lot of unnecessary suffering – and rightly imposed losses on the German and French banks and other financial investors that recklessly lent to Greece. But instead, the eurozone establishment – the European Commission in Brussels, the European Central Bank in Frankfurt and eurozone governments, not least Angela Merkel’s administration in Berlin – decided to use European taxpayers’ money to bail out those banks, lending Greece even more so that it could repay them.

Regrettably, that means people in Germany, France, Spain, Italy and other eurozone countries would now suffer losses if Greece’s debt is cut – and that’s unfair. But it’s still necessary – and Europeans should be angry at the banks and the eurozone establishment for this, not Greeks. By placing the banks’ interests ahead of those of ordinary citizens, the eurozone establishment has set Europeans against each other.
Signing this petition doesn’t mean you support everything else the new Greek government wants to do. It is about sending a message to the eurozone establishment: that you demand debt justice for the Greek people as a gesture of solidarity and as an essential part of putting the crisis in the eurozone behind us. Please join us now!